On paper, Nintendo’s lawsuit targeting the developers of Switch emulator Yuzu was solid. It also had the potential to drag on for a long time.

Without surprise banana peels suddenly making an appearance, on balance, Nintendo could’ve walked away with a fairly easy win. Yet just weeks after the lawsuit was filed, Nintendo and the anonymous Yuzu developers agreed to settle.

From the outside it was neat, tidy, and efficient. Perhaps even unusually so.

A judgment in favor of Nintendo, following a case heard on the merits, would’ve arguably served as a more valuable deterrent. Instead, Nintendo successfully protected its brand and eliminated all risk of not getting precisely what it needed to shut down similar operations in the future.

The resulting judgment and permanent injunction now serve as guidance tools; they detail specific actions relevant to emulation and why they represent illegality and red lines for Nintendo.

Nintendo Targets Suyu, Nuzu, Uzuy, Torzu, and Sudachi

As Nintendo continues to target Yuzu-like emulators that remain available online, takedown notices now feature detailed information about Yuzu to ensure compliance.

Nintendo’s general position is that since the software it wants to take down is based on the same code as Yuzu, the legal conclusions in the Yuzu matter should be applied here. For good measure, copies of the Yuzu judgment and the injunction that restrains its developers are supplied for reference.

A DMCA takedown notice sent to GitHub dated July 5, 2024, is a perfect example. An introductory paragraph details Nintendo’s deployment of technological protection measures (TPM). These ensure that the Nintendo Switch console only plays legitimate Nintendo video game files, while preventing users from unlawfully copying and playing Switch games on “unauthorized” devices, Nintendo explains.

The notice goes on to list 14 emulator repositories that contain or are based on Yuzu code. On that basis, Nintendo wants them taken down.

“The reported repositories offer and provide access to the yuzu emulator or code based on the yuzu emulator (specifically, programs called Suyu, Nuzu, Uzuy, Torzu, and Sudachi). The yuzu emulator is primarily designed to play Nintendo Switch games. Specifically, yuzu illegally circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures and runs illegal copies of Nintendo Switch games,” the notice reads.

The remainder of the notice covers previously established ground in respect of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA and how Yuzu was found to have violated those provisions. In summary, the approach was a complete success.

All Repos Unavailable, Two Different Reasons

At the time of writing, all 14 repositories are unavailable, for one of two possible reasons. The majority display a ‘page not found’ message which suggests that after receiving the takedown notice, some developers responded by deleting their own repositories.

The remaining six repos (1x Yuzo-type, 1x Torzu, 2x Suyo, 2x Uzuy) display a takedown advisory from GitHub, suggesting they either didn’t respond quickly enough or for some reason, did not respond to the notice at all.

While his repo has been deleted, one developer doesn’t see this as the end of the road.

Sudachi Will Be Completely Rewritten

In a post to X on July 5, the developer of Sudachi acknowledged that his repo had been targeted by Nintendo. He also indicated that since his software provided “no illegal content” he would follow up with a counter notice.

In a subsequent post, circumvention entered the equation and from there, a later update on replacing some of Sudachi’s code with an open-source alternative.

Further chin-scratching in respect of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions and what they mean for emulators like Sudachi, may suggest that even the most brilliant of coding minds find this aspect of the DMCA somewhat impenetrable.

That’s hardly a surprise given that most people associate copyright law with the right to copy, rather than the circumvention of measures that “effectively control access” to copyright works, regardless of whether they’re effective or if anything was actually copied.

As mentioned earlier, the text in the judgment and injunction appear to be the new guard rails; those in the Switch emulator scene will find the space in the middle very, very narrow indeed.

Nintendo’s DMCA takedown notice is available here

Image credit: Stockcake

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In 2015, Brazilian developer Matheus Valadares shared a new game called Agar.io on 4chan, which soon became a smash hit.

The game also popularized the IO extension for games, a reference to the input/output computing term, not the Indian Ocean territory from where it originally derived its initials.

These IO games are often quite basic but addictive and entertaining nonetheless. They’re typically available in app stores and also on the web, where they can be played in the browser. Belgium-based game website CrazyGames has more than 150 IO games listed, for example, but there are many more.

YoHoHo

YoHoHo.io is a popular ‘battle royale’ IO release. The pirate-themed kill-and-plunder game has many thousands of active players, through apps and via the website. Similar to other games of its type, it’s free to play, with the occasional advertisement.

The availability of YoHoHo is not limited to official sites and apps, though. There are various hobbyist game portals that offer the game as well, without permission from the rightsholders and typically minus the ads.

Several of these game sites are hosted though GitHub pages. While many players might appreciate the advertising-free gaming experience, not everyone fancies this unauthorized use.

Github Takedown Notice

Earlier this week, GitHub received a takedown notice from an unnamed sender, asking the developer platform to remove several ‘pirated’ versions of the pirate-themed game.

YoHoHo.io Takedown
 

The takedown notice references an anti-circumvention claim, suggesting that the pirated versions disabled the JavaScript sitelock. This preventive measure typically prevents third-parties from loading the game though external sites.

The allegedly infringing games are part of larger game portals that are hosted through GitHub pages. While GitHub didn’t greenlight the anti-circumvention claim, it took the YoHoHo games offline based on other copyright claims.

“While GitHub did not find sufficient information to determine a valid anti-circumvention claim, we determined that this takedown notice contains other valid copyright claim(s),” GitHub writes.

This appears to be a fairly straightforward takedown, but the sender of the notice remains a mystery. TorrentFreak reached out to YoHoHo.io publisher Crazy Games, who informed us that they are not behind it.

Other potential claimants do seem to exist. ExodragonGames, for example, appears to be the creator of YoHoHo.io and several other IO games. The company didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.

Shiver me Timbers!

It appears that several of the developers who shared the game on their own portals didn’t mean any harm. In response to the takedown, some websites disappeared completely and while others still offer games, they don’t intend to relaunch YoHoHo.

“I have removed anything remaining and related to YoHoHo.io on my site. I very much respect the author’s property rights and I apologize for this incident!” one developer told us.

A brief look at one of the remaining portals suggests that YoHoHo.io is indeed no longer featured, but many other games remain.

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Those setting out to buy a pirate IPTV device, perhaps even for the first time, have broadly three options.

The first is to buy a ‘blank’ Android device from a retailer before navigating a minefield they don’t understand, hoping to buy a pirate subscription without getting ripped off.

A second and increasingly popular option is to buy a device with an embedded subscription, either from a friend, a friend-of-a-friend, or from those prepared to sell them via websites or openly on social media.

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

According to a lawsuit filed by DISH Network and Sling TV in May, targeting California residents Marcelino Padilla and Danny Contreras, Facebook was the sales platform of choice. Convenient for both sellers and buyers, platforms like Facebook are increasingly used for pirate IPTV sales. For DISH investigators, that could be seen as a positive.

The complaint alleged that Padilla and Conteras violated the companies’ rights under the DMCA by ‘trafficking’ in illicit streaming services which, at least in part, provided content illegally obtained from their legal streaming services.

The fact these devices were sold under Padilla’s real name, alongside photographs of large boxes containing set-top boxes ready for sale, seems unnecessarily risky in the current climate. But here we are.

Demonstrating large sales reduces sales longer term

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea to spend their evenings studying the intricacies of copyright law, but Omi in a Hellcat’s fate could hardly be described as inaccessible.

Growing Interest in Certain Devices

Lawsuits like this are certainly nothing new. DISH and Sling have been filing not dissimilar complaints for several years while demanding damages under the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.

More recently, however, there has been an uptick in lawsuits against individuals selling a particular type of set-top device. Their characteristics make them both easy to sell and attractive to buyers.

In its complaint, DISH focuses on the ‘services’ but in reality, those services are inseparable from the devices that customers physically buy.

“Defendants sell the Services for a one-time cost of approximately $350.00. Padilla’s Facebook posts emphasize that after the initial payment there are ‘no monthly fees’ (unlike legitimate pay-television services such as the services provided by Plaintiffs that charge a monthly subscription fee),” DISH notes.

“Padilla’s advertising places an emphasis on converting users from legitimate subscription-based television services such as those provided by Plaintiffs, stating for example ‘no monthly fees’ and ‘Cut the cord forever’.”

One Upfront Outlay, No Monthly Subscription

The brands of the devices sold by the defendants – Tanggula, vSeeBox and SuperBox – have become increasingly well known over the past couple of years. The Facebook groups through which they were offered – Vsee, Super Box, Superbox Support & Sales, Superbox Support, and Tanggula TV Box – leave little to the imagination.

At $350 per unit, pricing is certainly steep when compared to other similarly-powered devices available on the market. However, there’s no requirement with these broadly similar set-top boxes to take out a separate IPTV subscription that needs to be renewed each month.

Buyers simply need to follow a few basic instructions (those below come from a reseller’s advertising) and their device is instantly activated with almost all content imaginable.

Please activate the Tanggula box before running TangTV first time. Go to the “TAStore” (Homepage–>APP–>TAStore) App, click “Activation” then click “Tang TV” and “Tars TV” to download. You can download Tang TV directly from the “TAStore” app without downloading through links. Including after factory reset, they can also download Tang TV directly in “TAStore”

Devices with similar functionality under different branding managed to cause a public scandal in Taiwan back in 2021. At a California court last Friday, the claimed 500 set-top boxes sold by Padilla theoretically cost him roughly 10 times their cost price in damages.

Final Judgment and Injunction

In a judgment dated July 5, 2024, the court found the defendants liable for violations of the DMCA’s section 1201(a)(2), for trafficking in illegal streaming services accessed via the vSeeBox and Tanggula set-top devices. Damages were calculated at $2,500 under section 1203(c)(3)(A) for each of the 500 services/devices sold by Padilla.

While no damages were applied to Danny Contreras, damages against Padilla amounted to a cool $1,250,000, at least on paper. The terms of the judgment and accompanying injunction were reached by agreement and while the plaintiffs will have few qualms about inflicting considerable pain, it’s possible that information will play some part in keeping payable damages down.

Meanwhile, the terms of the injunction strongly suggest that those looking for a pre-loaded set-top box in California will now have to look elsewhere. That provides a little food for thought.

Next Day Delivery?

The devices sold by Padilla are not especially rare or indeed anything particularly special. The built-in subscription sets them apart from the majority of devices on the market and that can be a big plus for some people.

That they can be easily purchased from Amazon in the United States, Canada, the UK, and most countries in Europe, may come as more of a surprise, however.

In light of Padilla’s $1.25m bill, these devices being sold on Amazon may seem a little jarring; one rule for them and another for everyone else, perhaps.

In reality, there are indeed different rules and here, various technical legal matters aside, everything can be boiled down to intent.

While the devices are simply being sold on Amazon, arguably they’re not illegal until the user activates the subscription package. If we compare that to the sales in California, the same might be true; at least if everything hadn’t been undermined by the not insignificant matter of the devices being deliberately and openly sold for infringing purposes.

Finally, the question of the subscription – is it really for a lifetime? It probably all depends on what ‘lifetime’ means and that part rarely gets clarified. In fact, a YouTuber recently revealed he was gifted similar devices in exchange for a review, but things didn’t go entirely to plan.

After encountering network activity that caused him alarm, his review wasn’t exactly glowing. As a thank you, the devices he was gifted were remotely disabled. A disappointing outcome but on the plus side, the network shenanigans stopped.

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Earlier this month, torrent search engine MagnetDL mysteriously went offline, and there’s still no trace of the site today.

The site had previously gone offline after it faced copyright-related hosting challenges, which may have also played a role in its disappearance.

MagnetDL’s recent troubles were followed by the voluntary shutdown of pirate streaming site Animeflix a few days ago. While both sites operate in different niches and have nothing to do with each other, at some point they shared the same hosting company.

Hosting MagnetDL and Animeflix?

Data suggests that both sites have used the services of Hungarian hosting company ServerAstra. This may be a total coincidence, of course, but in our quest for additional information we contacted the company to see if it was able to provide insight into recent events.

As expected, ServerAstra refused to confirm or deny that it hosted MagnetDL or Animeflix. That’s an understandable response, as online services have to abide by strict privacy regulations in the EU. It also means that we don’t get to learn more about these two specific cases.

Luckily, however, ServerAstra was able to provide additional insight into how the EU Copyright Directive has changed the position of hosting providers in Europe. This directly affects alleged ‘pirate’ sites.

Historically, many hosting providers preferred not to get involved in copyright disputes. They often referred takedown notices to their clients, so the parties could resolve these matters directly. The approach was similar to that taken by prominent domain registrars and registries.

In recent years, many hosting providers have adopted more strict policies to ban trouble-causing pirate sites. Under the EU Copyright Directive adopted five years ago, this is now a requirement.

The EU Copyright Directive requires websites that publish ‘user-uploaded’ content to have a proper takedown policy, aimed at minimizing copyright infringement. If such a policy is not in place, complaints may be escalated to the upstream hosting provider.

Strict Rules Under the EU Copyright Directive

ServerAstra’s co-founder and CTO, Andrew Azarov, informs us that so-called pirate sites are not welcome at their company and that they abide by strict rules, largely dictated by the Copyright Directive.

“[Per the Copyright Directive] any website hosting content submitted by third parties must have a contact form, list an entity responsible for the website and react to abuse complaints directly within a very short (12 hours) time,” he explains.

“If there is no such information on the website or complaints are not responded to within a reasonable timeframe – the copyright owner or complainer with power of attorney may escalate to upstream hosting.

“Customers will be suspended and/or terminated in violation of copyright if they do not comply with demands of copyright holders,” ServerAstra’s CTO stresses.

Azarov notes that escalation could mean ServerAstra blocking an IP address or handing over the personal details of a customer to the complaining party. Put differently, copyright holders can obtain the personal details behind an infringing site without intervention from the courts or law enforcement.

Sharing Customer Info with Rightsholders

ServerAstra doesn’t happily share customer information with third-parties due to privacy concerns. However, the company learned the hard way that refusing to do so can lead to legal trouble and hefty fines.

In the past, the hosting provider would only share information in response to requests from the local police, or through the EUROPOL cooperation system, but under the EU Copyright Directive it will now respond directly to rightsholders or authorized representatives.

ServerAstra initially rejected requests for information, arguing that personal information was protected by its privacy policy and EU privacy law (GDPR). This resulted in a lawsuit at a court in Hamburg, Germany, which required the company to pay a hefty fine for its refusal to cooperate.

The hosting company is not in a position to share the details of this case, which remains private, but it means that it will hand over personal details of customers under the right conditions.

To keep costs low this process is largely automated, Azarov explains. While the company can’t share any individual details, it has already taken ten actions in response to ten copyright complaints during this month alone.

Pirate Site Troubles

Whether MagnetDL or Animeflix were subject to such an action is unknown. These sites are not typical user-generated content sites, as the operators managed and organized the content. However, both sites linked to content uploaded by third-parties.

Needless to say, when a website is clearly copyright infringing, we don’t expect any reputable host to challenge the definition of Online Content-Sharing Service Providers (OCSSP) under the EU Copyright Directive.

All in all, it’s safe to say that the hosting environment in Europe has become more challenging for pirate sites in recent years. While there will always be companies catering to these types of services, copyright holders have gained extra enforcement powers in Europe, which is precisely what the EU Copyright Directive aimed to achieve.

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The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have three newcomers on the list. “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on July 08 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

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On November 4, 2022, the United States Department of Justice and the FBI began seizing Z-Library’s domains as part of a major operation to shut down the infamous ‘shadow library’ platform.

A criminal investigation had identified two Russian nationals, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, as the alleged operators of the site. On October 21, 2022, at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Judge Sanket J. Bulsara ordered their arrest. They were detained in Argentina on November 3, 2022.

After arriving at the Ambrosio Taravella International Airport, the unsuspecting couple cleared customs and hired a car from a popular rental company. The United States Embassy informed local authorities that the pair were subject to an Interpol Red Notice.

At what point the Russians’ phones were tapped is unclear but, under the authority of a Federal Court arrest warrant, Argentinian law enforcement began tracking the couple’s movements as they traveled south in their rented Toyota Corolla.

Using data submitted in support of a Chamber of Deputies (lower house of the Argentine Congress) inquiry and data made available elsewhere, we were able to recreate the route allegedly taken by Napolsky and Ermakova before their arrest.

Points of reference in the reports are widely spaced, so the exact route will likely differ from that shown (right). What is clear, however, is that following a visit to El Calafate, the pair were arrested by airport security police as they arrived in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz. They were later transferred to Córdoba.

Napolsky and Ermakova informed authorities they were on vacation in Argentina, enjoying the sights in a rented car. They’d done much the same in almost 100 countries previously, although without any serious issue.

In January 2023, Judge Miguel Hugo Vaca Narvaja authorized the Russians to be detained under house arrest. Approval from Córdoba prosecutor Maximiliano Hairabedian, who was responsible for the request to extradite Napolsky and Ermakova to the United States, was not obtained.

Pair Fight Extradition to the United States

With a federal indictment, alleging criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering offenses, waiting for them in the United States, the priority for Napolsky and Ermakova would soon be their fight against extradition.

According to a November 2022 statement made by the Russian embassy in Argentina, no official extradition request was received in the immediate wake of the pair’s arrest. The embassy noted that “Argentina does not allow automatic execution of extraterritorial decisions and requests from third states.” Yet even after the request arrived, the process was far from straightforward.

After retaining counsel, the pair denied all wrongdoing. With diplomats from the Russian embassy in attendance, counsel for Napolsky argued that the extradition request failed on the basics by not specifying which copyrighted works had allegedly been infringed, among other things.

That triggered a somewhat remarkable series of events.

Judge Requested Additional Detail From U.S. Authorities

Under pressure from the defense, Judge Sergio Pinto agreed to seek more information from U.S. authorities so that the defendants’ concerns about evidence could be addressed. However, the defense had other concerns too, including the impartiality of Judge Pinto, who had reportedly granted the United States a 30-day extension to correct defects in their extradition request.

According to local news publication La Voz, the extension led to the defense accusing Judge Pinto of bias towards the United States. The defense said that a judge’s job is to judge and here, by granting an extension to the requesting state after closing the trial, the defense had no opportunity to participate in the process and suffered a disadvantage.

Defendants’ counsel called for Judge Pinto’s recusal and the Judge defended his position. Having reviewed the case, Judge Abel Sánchez Torres sided with the Russians and Judge Pinto was removed.

New Judge Orders Extradition

After replacing Judge Pinto, Judge Sánchez Freytes presided over the second extradition hearing. Based on the charges – criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering – the Judge said that extradition to the United States was appropriate.

With Napolsky and Ermakova still under house arrest in Córdoba, an appeal to the Supreme Court of Justice sought political refugee status for the Russians. Success would mean the Russians could not be extradited to the United States. Meanwhile, another Russian was also seeking refugee status, this time to avoid extradition to Russia.

Oleg Andreevich Kulakov is considered an opponent of the Kremlin. According to a La Voz report, at the hearing previously attended by diplomats from the Russian embassy, Napolsky and Ermakova mentioned that Kulakov, wanted for fraud in Russia, is a neighbor of theirs. A decision on Kulakov’s extradition awaits a decision from the National Refugee Commission; Napolsky and Ermakova, on the other hand, appear to have decided that the time for waiting was over.

Z-Library Defendants Vanish Into Thin Air

Patronato del Liberado (Patronage of the Liberated) is responsible for assisting people who have previously been detained by the authorities with family and social reintegration. It’s also tasked with monitoring compliance of those on probation or subject to house arrest.

According to unnamed ‘judicial sources’ cited by La Voz, which receives full credit for a remarkable scoop, when the group conducted a regular visit in May, to verify that Napolsky and Ermakova were in compliance with the rules set by the state, there was no trace of them.

Patronato del Liberado raised the alarm and Judge Sánchez Freytes was immediately notified. Counsel for the defense during the extradition hearings said that he hadn’t been able to contact the Russians either.

The Judge ordered an international arrest warrant although there appeared to be at least some hope the pair hadn’t left the country. However, that was many weeks ago and with no obvious news suggesting their recapture, the pair could be anywhere by now.

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Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related sources.

The site launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, to ensure continued availability of ‘free’ books and articles to the broader public.

Late last year, Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making information from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online. The site’s operators took more than a year to scrape several terabytes of data and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free.

This ‘metadata’ heist was a massive breakthrough in the site’s quest to archive as much published content as possible. However, OCLC wasn’t pleased and responded with a lawsuit at an Ohio federal court, accusing the site and its operators of hacking and demanding damages.

The non-profit says that it spent more than a million dollars responding to Anna’s Archive’s alleged hacking efforts. Even then, it couldn’t prevent the data from being released through a torrent.

“Defendants, through the Anna’s Archive domains, have made, and continue to make, all 2.2 TB of WorldCat® data available for public download through its torrents,” OCLC wrote in the complaint it filed in an Ohio federal court.

No Response from Anna’s Archive

In the months that passed since then, the operators of Anna’s Archive didn’t respond in court. The only named defendant flat-out denied all connections to the site, and OCLC didn’t receive any response from any of the official Anna’s Archive email addresses that were served.

Meanwhile, the pirate library continues to offer the WorldCat® data, which is a major problem for the organization. Without the prospect of a two-sided legal battle, OCLC has now moved for a default judgment.

“OCLC respectfully prays that a default judgment be entered in its favor against defendant Anna’s Archive and that OCLC be granted declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, and monetary damages,” the non-profit writes.

The plaintiff notes that it continues to fight an unknown defendant who is unwilling to show up in court. Therefore, a default judgment is the only option it has left.

Millions in Damages

While the exact scale of the damages has yet to be established, OCLC states that it has suffered considerable harm. In response to the massive scraping operation, which caused substantial downtime, its technical infrastructure had to be upgraded and improved.

For example, the organization spent $1,548,693 on upgrades for its hardware infrastructure, and an additional $608,069 for a two-year Cloudflare contract that helps to protect the service against malicious outside attacks.

Other costs include the salaries of 34 full-time employees, who were tasked with mitigating the harm caused by the attacks, as well as various other investigation, security, and hardware-related costs.

Adding up all the extra charges brings total damages to over $5 million; OCLC says the harm is ongoing, so that number continues to rise.

“OCLC has incurred damages of $5,333,064 as a direct result of Anna’s Archive’s cyberattacks, but that amount does not fully compensate OCLC for the harm from Anna’s Archive’s wrongful actions. OCLC continues to suffer from harms that cannot be remedied by monetary damages.”

Site Blocking?

In addition to monetary damages, the non-profit also seeks injunctive relief. The motion doesn’t specify the requested measures, but the original complaint sought an order that prevents Anna’s Archive from scraping WorldCat data going forward.

In addition, all previously scraped data should no longer be distributed. Instead, it should be destroyed in full, including all the torrents that are currently being offered.

OCLC says the requested injunctive relief is warranted, noting that this isn’t the first time that rightsholders have requested courts to take action against the site. Multiple countries and publishers have already recognized the illegality of Anna’s Archive’s pirate activities by issuing site blocking injunctions against its domains.

“Anna’s Archive has been banned in several other countries for its deliberate violations of copyright laws, and publishers are making shutting down Anna’s Archive a top priority,” the motion reads, referencing bans in Italy and The Netherlands.

“Therefore, the public interest will be served by an injunction that curtails the continuing harm from Anna’s Archive’s flagrant disregard for the law,” OCLC adds.

Domain Suspension?

The current motion doesn’t include a request for site blocking in the United States. However, it is possible that OCLC may ask more concrete measures in the future. That could also include a potential domain suspension.

In this light, it is interesting to note that Anna’s Archive moved away from its .org domain about a week ago. The .org domain is managed by the Public Interest Registry with Tucows as the registrar, both of which fall under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

Anna’s Archive switched to a .GS domain instead, which falls under the UK-based Atlantis North registry. That domain was registered by domain privacy provider Njalla, which adds another layer of complexity from an enforcement perspective.

As things stand, it appears that Anna’s Archive is not going anywhere. While OCLC may very well have the law on its side, enforcing it may turn out to be quite the challenge.

—

A copy of OCLC’s request for a default judgment against the unnamed “Anna’s Archive” defendant, submitted at an Ohio federal court, is available here (pdf)

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Retelling a few funny stories about the early antics of Web Sheriff might be quite fun. At least until the realization that was around sixteen years ago when the internet wasn’t facing a serious threat of censorship and regulation.

So much has changed since then it would be difficult to recapture the essence of those stories today. However, the Web Sheriff’s plan to board and then scuttle The Pirate Bay stands out as a watershed moment in the development of alternate realities in the anti-piracy space.

Planned in absolute secrecy apart from a few press releases, it involved the formation of an elite unit to take down The Pirate Bay, once and for all. Led by a Sheriff, the team consisted of a construction worker, a cowboy, an intimidating fellow dressed head to foot in black leather, a policeman, a gentleman resplendent in full Indian regalia, and a lone GI bravely bringing up the rear.

Some say the imagery accompanying this bold anti-piracy operation aimed to disorientate and disrupt pirates by making them question their own sanity. Even to this day, some believe the campaign caused cognitive disruption and was responsible for inexplicable amnesia among pirates.

While everyone remembers the images, it’s perhaps telling that nobody can recall anything about the operation or its damaging effect on The Pirate Bay.

Yet, here we are a decade-and-a-half later, potentially witnessing something even bigger. A pair of genuine copyright complaints, sent by Web Sheriff to Cloudflare last week, are certainly disorientating. The fact that they caused Cloudflare to do something it rarely does, raises even more questions.

SmashyStream and Movielair Violated All the Laws

The notices sent to Cloudflare targeting SmashyStream and Movielair claim to protect the rights of EDGLRD, which according to the blurb on its website “is a new IP-based studio working with a network of leading artists, musicians & film directors.”

EDGLRD released a movie last September about an assassin on a mission to kill a demonic crime lord. It’s called Aggro Dr1ft, it co-stars Travis Scott, and was shot entirely in infrared. The trailer is headache inducing; yet somehow not as visually and mentally concussive as the takedown notices sent to Cloudflare.

An artist’s impression of the © copyrighted © copyright notices sent to Cloudflare

The takedown notices cannot be described as DMCA takedown notices due to their format. However, they’re pretty much identical and right off the bat deliver a powerful statement. For the reasons directly underneath, that doesn’t hinder reporting.

© 2024 WEB SHERIFF® This Notice is the Copyright of WEB SHERIFF®

(Criticism ✔ Commentary ✔ News Reporting ✔ Public Interest ✔ Non-Fiction Work ✔ Ԁɐɹopʎ ✔)

The nature of the take down notices requires direct quotation here to avoid misrepresentation. They amount to a smörgåsbord of allegations made under the legal system of an unidentified country and read as follows:

• Infringed / Violated Rights : A. COPYRIGHT, B. PERFORMERS’ RIGHTS, C. MORAL RIGHTS, D. RIGHTS-OF-PUBLICITY, E. CONSUMER PROTECTION RIGHTS
• Infringing / Violating Materials : PIRATED COPYRIGHT MOTION PICTURE(S) AND / OR TELEVISION PRODUCTION(S) AND / OR OTHER AUDIO-VISUAL RECORDING(S) – ‘AGGRO DR1FT’
• COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS)
• PERFORMERS’ RIGHTS INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS EMBODYING RECORDED PERFORMANCES / PERFORMERS’ RIGHTS)
• MORAL RIGHTS INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS EMBODYING MORAL RIGHTS)
• RIGHTS-OF-PUBLICITY INFRINGEMENT (UNAUTHORIZED EXPLOITATION & DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHT MATERIALS IN CONJUNCTION WITH NAME AND / OR LIKENESS)
• CONSUMER PROTECTION RIGHTS VIOLATIONS (THROUGH MISLEADING & DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES AND / OR FALSE ENDORSEMENTS & BOGUS AFFILIATIONS)
• BREACH OF ISP’S PUBLISHED TERMS OF SERVICE / ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (BY REASON OF THE ABOVE INFRINGEMENTS & VIOLATIONS)
• BREACH OF SITE’S PUBLISHED TERMS OF SERVICE / ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY (BY REASON OF THE ABOVE INFRINGEMENTS & VIOLATIONS)
** TRADEMARK & GENERAL RESERVATION OF RIGHTS ** ALL REGISTERED, COMMON-LAW & PENDING TRADEMARK RIGHTS ARE HEREBY STRICTLY RESERVED (AS APPLICABLE) AND AS ARE ALL OTHER RIGHTS OF AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY NATURE (WHETHER EXPOUNDED HEREIN OR OTHERWISE).

Given that a notice in this format makes no attempt to comply with the requirements of the DMCA, some companies in the U.S. might choose to reject it. Nevertheless, it’s still made clear in the notices that access to infringing content needs to be prevented.

On that basis there’s no real reason not to take action and on that front, Cloudflare seems to agree.

Cloudflare Blocks Access to Movie ‘For Legal Reasons’

The ‘Error HTTP 451’ status code was approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) back in 2015 as a more informative alternative to the ‘403 Forbidden’ code utilized by some ISPs engaged in blocking.

While still relatively rare, it has appeared more frequently of late when users outside the bloc attempt to access content subject to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

On rare occasions, ‘Error HTTP 451’ has been observed when pirate sites are subjected to blocking orders. In 2020, Cloudflare began showing the code when DDL-Music was blocked under the orders of a German court.

As the images below show, the takedown notices on the left, sent by Web Sheriff to Cloudflare last week, now lead to the Error HTTP 451 status codes on the right.

Smashystream – Unavailable for legal reasons

Movielair – Unavailable for legal reasons

Both error pages link to copies of the takedown notices listed on the Lumen Database (1, 2). That’s useful since they explain what prompted Cloudflare to implement blocking.

What’s So Special About These Notices?

As noted earlier, Error HTTP 451 status messages are a relative rarity for piracy-related content. What is even more unusual here, at least as far as we can determine, is that they relate to the specific URLs mentioned in the Web Sheriff takedown notices. Most if not all URLs on both sites appear to be available as normal.

The big question is why Cloudflare has responded in this way to a Web Sheriff complaint alleging violations of seemingly all IP-related laws in existence today, while (at least as far as we can determine) refusing to offer a similar service to the world’s largest movie studios?

At least in theory, how and where the websites are hosted could play a part (Cloudflare does block permanently hosted content following valid copyright complaints). At least one of the sites above uses infrastructure and/or content hosted in Malaysia, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary in itself, so other factors could be at play.

That seems to lead to an uncomfortable conclusion. While the combined might of the Web Sheriff and The Village People proved laughably ineffective against The Pirate Bay, a barrage of legal allegations – fired from a comically broad blunderbuss – appears to have prompted rarely-seen pinpoint blocking by Cloudflare.

People laughed at Web Sheriff’s earlier antics; they might not be laughing now.

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At the turn of the century, piracy was booming at university campuses across America and far beyond.

Seemingly unlimited broadband connections and the presence of many tech-savvy students provided an ideal breeding ground for the rapid expansion of the file-sharing craze.

Napster provided the spark and when that shut down, other software applications including Kazaa, LimeWire, and BitTorrent, fueled the fire in the years to come.

HEOA

This virtual free-for-all lasted for years and, in some places, continues to this day. In the United States, however, higher education institutions were forced to put the brakes on piracy due to the passing of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) in 2008.

The HEOA requires American universities and colleges to adopt and implement effective anti-piracy policies. These should include technological anti-piracy measures as well as educational material to deter piracy.

If educational institutions fail to properly police piracy, they risk losing federal funding. This is the main reason why all higher education institutions have similarly worded ‘file-sharing’ and copyright warnings in place today.

It’s totally understandable that these policies remain in place. That said, the texts and warnings we ran into while reviewing some this week, could use a bit of an upgrade, to say the least.

Kazaa, BearShare, eDonkey, and eMule…

In the 16 years since HEOA passed, the online piracy landscape has changed dramatically. At the time, LimeWire was the most popular file-sharing tool, and names like Kazaa, BearShare, eDonkey, and eMule, were still top of mind.

These applications are dead and buried now; most collapsed under the weight of legal pressure. However, many American universities still caution their students not to use these applications for nefarious purposes.

A simple Google search instantly reveals dozens of live pages, many of which are updated regularly. For some reason, however, the LimeWire and Kazaa warnings are still front and center.

For example:

“In spite of court rulings holding that it is illegal, some people have continued to engage in so-called peer-to-peer (“P2P”) sharing of commercial copyrighted products, using software programs such as Morpheus, LimeWire, Grokster, and KaZaA. This activity is unlawful,” the University of Vermont cautions.

“It is not recommended to use file-sharing programs such as KaZaa, LimeWire, and Bearshare, unless you are familiar with their configuration,” Truman State University warns.

“Programs like Kazaa, Ares, iMesh and Limewire (Free and Pro versions) are popular ways to share music and movie files across the Internet, but they pose legal and security risks that can result in serious trouble for you – even court cases and fines,” Metro State University cautions.

“Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BitTorrent, BearShare, Limewire, Morpheus, iMesh and KaZaA make it easy for you to share files,” the University of Texas writes.

“P2P typically requires a “client” – a software program installed on their personal computer – to share files. Examples of clients are Kazaa, Limewire, BearShare, uTorrent, etc. and other various BitTorrent clients,” the University of Alabama notes.

“File sharing applications such as KaZaA, BitTorrent, eDonkey, and LimeWire are not illegal, though many people using such applications share illegal materials, and don’t have permission to distribute them,” Brescia University explains.

Blubster, Gnucleus and Shareaza…

The good news is that most universities and colleges recognize that the technology itself isn’t to blame. File-sharing is fine, but piracy isn’t. However, cautioning against the unauthorized use of software that no longer exists is rather pointless.

The most impressive summary of file-sharing applications, which are nearly all defunct, comes from Boston University. Their list includes the following:

Acquisition, Aimster, Ares, Ares Lite, BearShare, Blubster, Direct Connect, eDonkey2000, Overnet, Freewire, Gnucleus, Grokster, GTK-Gnutella, iMesh, Kazaa Lite, Kazaa Lite K++, Kazaa Media Desktop, LimeWire, LordofSearch, Mactella, Morpheus, NeoNapster, OneMX, Phex, Piolet, Poisoned, Qtella, Shareaza, TrustyFiles, Warez P2P, WinMX, and XoLoX.

Boston’s File Sharing Scare
 

This list may bring back memories for those who went to university at the start of the millennium. Today’s students, however, will have no clue what it’s about since the pirates among them use more moderns apps and services.

Beware of Skype and World of Warcraft!

The above shows that many educational institutions should update their copyright policies and related file-sharing warnings. In their current form, they don’t make much sense.

This also applies to Stanford University, which has another gem in its “Peer-to-Peer Traffic Advisory“. Apparently, Skype and World of Warcraft, can trigger file-sharing related warnings.

The Microsoft-owned communication app and Blizzard’s popular game relied on file-sharing technology in the past. This is still a concern for Stanford.

“Skype transmits phone calls over the Internet using software based on the KaZaa file-sharing protocol,” Stanford writes.

“World of Warcraft uses the BitTorrent protocol to distribute software patches, which are sometimes large enough to hit the PacketShaper’s radar,” the university adds.

What to Do at Stanford?
 

As far as we know, Skype and World of Warcraft no longer trigger P2P detection systems such as PacketShaper, but the caution remains in place. Better safe than sorry, right?

Just to be clear, Stanford’s Peer-to-Peer Traffic Advisory was last updated on March 6, 2024.

—

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With dozens of millions of monthly visits, Animeflix positioned itself as one of the most popular anime piracy portals.

The site also has an active Discord community of around 35k members, who actively participate in discussions, art competitions, even a chess tournament.

Target: Animeflix

While rightsholders take no offense at these side-projects, the site’s core business was streaming pirated videos. That hasn’t gone unnoticed; last December Animeflix was listed as one of the shutdown targets of anti-piracy coalition ACE.

Whether these early enforcement efforts were responsible for the site’s closure is unclear. In May, rightsholders increased the pressure through the High Court of India, obtaining a broad injunction that effectively suspended Animeflix’s main domain name; Animeflix.live.

This follow-up action didn’t seem to hurt the site too much. It simply moved to new domains, Animeflix.gg and Animeflix.li, informing its users that the old domain name had become “unavailable”.

Animeflix Shuts Down

Yesterday, the site became unreachable again, initially returning a Cloudflare error message. This time, the domain wasn’t the problem but, for reasons unknown, the team decided to shut down the site without prior notice.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix. After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years.

“Thank you for being a part of our journey. We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms,” the Animeflix team adds.

Heavy Heart
 

The Animeflix team doesn’t provide any insight into its reasoning, but it’s clear that keeping a site like that online isn’t without challenges. And, when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role.

It’s clear that rightsholders were keeping an eye on the site, and were actively seeking out options to take it offline. That might have played a role in the shutdown decision but without more information from the team, we can only speculate.

Coincidence?

There is an interesting coincidence that’s worth mentioning. At least in part, Animeflix was apparently hosted by the Hungarian company ServerAstra. This is the same host previously used by MagnetDL, before it mysteriously went offline last week.

Both sites were hosted on the same AS, along with many similar sites. This doesn’t have to mean anything at all, but it does stand out.

Whatever the reason, the end result is the closure of Animeflix. This is a fate that many pirate sites will ultimately face, including the original Animeflix, which went offline several years ago.

Given the popularity of the Animeflix brand, it’s likely that the name will be recycled once more, scooped up by a new team that dares to fill the void.

Needless to say, many users are disappointed to see their favorite anime portal gone. Rightsholders, however, might be throwing a party, before they move on to one of the many anime pirate sites that remain out there.

…

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When today’s home video gaming market took its first tentative baby steps thanks to more affordable hardware in the early 1980s, the details of Sony’s lawsuit against Datel would’ve been dismissed as outrageous.

This was a time of experimentation; one that thrived on the energy of pushing unimaginably incapable hardware by today’s standards, to perform in unexpected ways that often exceeded manufacturers’ expectations. In some cases, that included being able to run half-decent games, or even games at all.

Sony Wins Early But Cooler Heads Prevail

Software quite rightly receives protection under copyright law but in Datel, Sony wants a ruling that outlaws the modification of variables generated by software that only ever exist in RAM and form no part of the underlying copyrighted source code. Datel’s software simply ran alongside games like Motorstorm Arctic Edge, tweaking values in memory to modify how the game played.

In January 2012, the Hamburg Regional Court found largely in favor of Sony. The Court found that Datel’s software (Action Replay PSP and Tilt FX) intervened in the ‘program flow’ of Sony’s games and, by changing the flow, the original code was modified to create a derivative of Sony’s copyrighted game code.

The decision was overturned on appeal in 2021 and the case was dismissed. Sony appealed to the Federal Court of Justice which referred key questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling.

If Sony has its way and the protection software enjoys under the 2009 Computer Programs Directive is extended to transient variables in RAM, those who modify those variables – the users of tweaking software – would become direct infringers under copyright law. Creators of the software, in this case Datel, could be held secondarily liable.

Advocate General’s Opinion Nudges Case in the Right Direction

Advocate General Szpunar’s published opinion is not binding and the CJEU could ultimately decide on its own path.

The challenge, should one exist, would be to dismiss AG Szpunar’s conclusions as anything other than legally sound, impeccably researched, and flawlessy logical.

“[T]he value of the variables is not an element of a computer program’s code. They are merely data, external to the code, which the computer produces and reuses when running the program,” he writes.

“Those data do not exist at the moment that the program is created by its author or when it is loaded into the computer’s memory, since they are generated only while the program is running. They are therefore not such as to enable the program – or even a part of it – to be reproduced.”

Variables Are Not Creative Works

According to case law, the protection conferred by Directive 2009/24 is limited to source code and object code, both of which satisfy the criterion of originality set out in Article 1(3). Variables in RAM, on the other hand, do not satisfy the criterion of originality.

The variables are not the author’s own intellectual creation, AG Szpunar points out. On the contrary, the variables are the result of progress made in the game, and a direct result of the player’s behavior.

“It is indeed true that the author designed the categories of the variables that are recorded as well the rules whereby their value is determined in the course of the game. However, that value itself escapes the author’s creative control, since it is necessarily dependent on factors which cannot be foreseen in advance, such as the player’s behavior. That value therefore cannot enjoy copyright protection.”

Noting that the variables are “transitory, temporary and provisional,” and “often reset to zero” when a program is next run, the variables fail to meet the threshold for copyright protection since they cannot be identified with “sufficient precision and objectivity.”

More Restrictions, More Money

AG Szpunar’s opinion is lengthy, technical, and at times quite challenging to absorb. The blame for that sits squarely with Sony, whose mental gymnastics appear laser-focused on what it needs to win the case, and oblivious to almost everything else.

It’s perhaps telling that various intellectual property law firms commenting on the opinion are noting the AG’s advice, while also advancing theories that generated variables in RAM could reasonably be considered part of the overall creative package.

When work for companies like Sony pays the bills, advocating for greater restrictions on existing freedoms doesn’t lead to less business, let’s put it that way. That the opposite is being argued in legal matters relating to output from generative AI, is certainly interesting, if nothing else.

AG Szpunar’s Conclusion

Ultimately, AG Szpunar draws the following conclusion:

Article 1(1) to (3) of Directive 2009/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs must be interpreted as meaning that the protection conferred by that directive pursuant to that provision does not extend to the content of the variables which the protected computer program has transferred to the RAM of the computer and uses in running it, in the situation in which another program operating at the same time as the protected computer program changes that content, without however the object code or the source code of the latter program being changed.

Full opinion available here

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Starting last year, various rightsholders began filing lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

The list of complainants includes record labels, book authors, visual artists, and newspapers, including the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work to train AI models without proper compensation.

The New York Times lawsuit targets OpenAI and Microsoft and is steadily moving forward. OpenAI recently indicated that it would like to consolidate this case with a similar lawsuit filed by other newspapers, but the Times objects to the proposal.

While these issues are fought out in court, both parties have also moved into discovery. That basically allows one party to request evidence from the other, to properly support or refute the copyright infringement claims that form the basis of the lawsuit.

OpenAI Seeks NYT ‘Source’ Material

In its quest for evidence, OpenAI is particularly interested in the copyrights of the New York Times’ works. This includes copyrighted news articles, which are often based on a variety of information gathered by its journalists.

For example, discovery requests no. 10-12 read as follows:

NO. 10: Documents sufficient to identify the expressive, original, and human-authored content of each of Your Asserted Works.

 

NO. 11: Documents sufficient to identify the non-expressive, non-original, or non-human-authored content of each of Your Asserted Works.

 

NO. 12: Documents sufficient to show each and every written work that informed the preparation of each of Your Asserted Works, regardless of its length, format, or medium.

The New York Times is not happy with this approach. The company has refused to share reporter’s notes and other information, as this would be overbroad and too burdensome. In addition, the Times pointed out that much of the information sought by OpenAI is protected by the reporter’s privilege.

OpenAI Files Motion to Compel

The refusal has created a dispute between the parties and OpenAI has urged the court to weigh in. Ideally, the AI company wants the court to compel the Times to cooperate.

OpenAI suggests that the ‘source’ information will help to determine what parts of the articles are ‘original’ and worthy of copyright protection, which may help it to counter the copyright infringement claims.

“[T]he Times cannot pursue a claim for infringement over any part of a copyrighted work that is not original to the Times, as would be the case if the Times copied another’s work or elements in the public domain,” OpenAI writes.

In its complaint, the Times described how it invests enormous amounts of time and expertise on its articles, which are sometimes the results of months or years of in-depth investigations. OpenAI would like to know what this claim entails.

“Having chosen to put directly at issue how the Times created the works at issue—including the methods, time, labor, and investment—OpenAI has a right to discovery into the same,” OpenAI writes.

In preparation for its defense, OpenAI further wants to know what portions of the copyrighted articles are “expressive, original, human-authored content”, and what parts are “non-expressive, non-original, or non-human-authored content.”

New York Times Refuses to Comply

Responding to the motion to compel, the Times makes it clear that the company doesn’t intend to give in. It stresses that its articles are copyrightable, whether they include third-party material or not.

“OpenAI claims that the reporters’ notes underlying the asserted works may shed light on whether The Times’s news articles are really original, expressive content—but that is not how copyright law works. The expressive nature of a work is determined by reference to the work itself.

“Moreover, even in the improbable case that a reporter’s notes show that 90% of an article comprises verbatim quotes from the author’s original sources, that article would still be protected by copyright,” the Times adds.

In addition, the newspaper reiterates that the discovery requests are overbroad, and invade the reporter’s privilege. Although OpenAI stressed that it’s not seeking to identify any confidential sources, its discovery request could have a chilling effect.

If journalistic outfits are required to disclose all source material for every copyrighted article, it may severely impact their ability or willingness to bring copyright lawsuits against potential infringers.

But perhaps that’s precisely what OpenAI tried to achieve here, the newspaper notes.

“Indeed, given the wildly improper scope of this request, one has to wonder if a chilling effect is exactly what OpenAI, who appears to have stolen from millions of content creators, is hoping for,” the Times writes.

—

A copy of OpenAI’s request to compel The New York Times to share the requested information is available here (pdf). This also includes other disputed requests. The New York Times’ response can be found here (pdf).

_{* For the purpose of record keeping, the referenced court filings are the sources we relied on for this article. No AI assistance was involved. Human labor was required to select and organize some of the arguments put forward by the parties, while intentionally excluding others to add focus.}

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Voltage Pictures and parent Voltage Holdings are among the most active companies in the file-sharing settlement market, and by now, the model is well known.

1. Begin by monitoring BitTorrent swarms where the companies’ movies are being shared without authorization.

2. After capturing the IP addresses and other relevant data relating to alleged infringers, persuade a court to order local ISPs to hand over their customers’ personal details.

3. Apply pressure until the infringer pays or find someone else to hold liable.

It’s only when settlement letters begin landing on mats that the traditional settlement model has a chance of generating revenue. In some countries, the system runs like a finely tuned machine. In others, Canada for example, some courts have taken a keen interest in fundamental matters that should’ve been more critically examined elsewhere.

Voltage Holdings LLC vs. Doe: Background

Following the model outlined above, Voltage Holdings filed a claim at Canada’s Federal Court alleging that a number of internet users had been observed downloading and sharing the 2017 sci-fi movie ‘Revolt‘ using BitTorrent. From a list of over 100 ‘Doe’ defendants, Voltage boiled things down to focus on 30. “The worst of the worst,” Voltage said, citing data scooped up by anti-piracy tracking company Maverickeye.

Since none of the thirty filed a defense, Voltage sought default judgments, statutory damages, and costs against all of them. If the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) hadn’t intervened, that could’ve led to considerable misery for those involved. As it turns out, CIPPIC’s involvement appears to have provided the type of balance these types of cases have been crying out for; not least, a welcome review of the basics.

Evidence is Quite Important

There was no question that the Doe defendants were in default for not responding to the complaint, but they had something else in common too. All were identified as ISP account holders; their names were on file as those who pay the bills, and the IP addresses observed sharing the movie were allocated to their respective accounts at the time of the alleged infringements.

They had another thing in common too. Not one shred of evidence was presented to identify these people as the actual infringers, something CIPPIC argued was fatal to the claimant’s case. Voltage wasn’t unprepared; the company pointed out that its allegations of repeat infringement were backed up by infringement notices previously sent to the Doe defendants via their ISPs.

Since they had failed to stop the infringement after receiving the notices, Voltage said the burden should shift. The defendant internet bill payers should be required to disprove their association with the alleged infringement, instead of Voltage having to prove they were involved.

The Federal Court disagreed. Voltage had provided no evidence to show that the 30 Doe defendants were the infringers, or that they had sufficient control over the actual infringers to be seen as authorizers of their infringing behavior.

Unsurprisingly, Voltage took its case to the Federal Court of Appeal, but fared no better. In a highly-detailed judgment, a panel of three judges concluded that mere association with an IP address is simply not enough to show, on the balance of probabilities, that any of the Doe internet subscribers also shared its movie online.

Voltage Requests a Hearing at the Supreme Court

In short, the evidence underpinning the entire case was so weak it couldn’t fulfil its most basic task. Instead, guesswork attempted to fill in the gaps, and failed while doing so.

Hoping that the Supreme Court would somehow see things differently, Voltage requested leave to appeal. Late last week, the request was denied.

Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal

For reasons that aren’t being made clear by the Supreme Court, the case is subject to a publication ban. That means no transparency on why Voltage’s request was rejected, which at this late stage is somewhat disappointing. Nevertheless, CIPPIC has published its memorandum in opposition to the Voltage request (pdf) along with a summary of what the rejection means for those involved, and what could happen moving forward.

“The Supreme Court has denied leave to hear the appeal in Voltage v Doe #1, a case in which CIPPIC has played a central role. The case raised questions about the burden of proof borne by copyright owners and the nature of the duties copyright’s authorization right imposes on internet subscribers,” CIPPIC reports.

As a result of the refusal to hear the appeal, CIPPIC says that its successful arguments last year before the Federal Court of Appeal stand.

• Plaintiffs must have direct evidence that Internet subscribers authorize infringing file-sharing through their accounts; liability cannot be inferred on the basis of notice and continued infringement alone.

 

• Authorization does not impose on subscribers a duty to police their internet accounts to enforce copyright owners’ rights on the basis of a notice alleging infringement. The well-settled standard of authorization (‘sanction, approve and countenance’) from CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2004 SCC 13, stands: an alleged authorizer must exercise a degree of control over a primary infringer.

“The matter remains alive,” CIPPIC notes. “Voltage must now attempt to gather more evidence about the nature of the internet subscribers’ relationship to the infringing activity before it can return to the Federal Court to seek default judgment.”

That is likely to present challenges, especially so given the age of the case. With the knowledge that additional evidence will be required in future cases, expect that to be forthcoming. Every day, tens of thousands of Canadian IP addresses can be observed sharing movies, despite a decade of cases like this periodically making the headlines.

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Hikari-no-Akari (HnA) is one of those specialized pirate sites that has managed to build up a dedicated audience over the years.

The music download portal, which links to externally hosted files, has been operating for well over a decade and currently draws more than a million monthly visits.

In addition to the public-facing part of the site, HnA also has a private forum and Discord channel. These have been notoriously difficult to get into, as they only sporadically open their doors to a limited number of new members.

“Their Discord is like an inter-dimensional portal that only opens during a certain planetary alignment,” a Reddit user wrote last year, aptly describing the site’s access policy.

プライベート?

The site doesn’t explain why it prefers to keep its private audience limited. Some have suggested it makes it harder for rightsholders to see everything being shared behind the scenes but the publicly posted material alone is already sufficient to draw attention.

Apparently, Sony Music Japan has been keeping an eye on the unauthorized music portal. The company has many of its works shared on the site, including anime theme music, which is popular around the globe.

For example, a few weeks ago, HnA posted “Sayonara, Mata Itsuka!” from the Japanese artist Kenshi Yonezu, which is used as the theme song for the asadora series “The Tiger and Her Wings”.

Around the same time, PEACEKEEPER, a song by Japanese musician STEREO DIVE FOUNDATION, featured in the third season of the series “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime”, was shared on the site.

Sony DMCA Notices

Sony Music Japan is a rightsholder for both these tracks, as well as many others that were posted on the site. The music company presumably tried to contact HnA directly to have these listings removed and reached out to its CDN service Cloudflare too, asking it to take action.

“We demand that you immediately disable access to the Infringing Work and cease any use, reproduction, and distribution of the Original Work. Specifically, we request that you remove or disable the Infringing Work from hikarinoakari.com, hnadownloads.co, or any of your system or services,” Sony wrote to Cloudflare on June 20th.

By now, most rightsholders should know that Cloudflare doesn’t ‘disable access’ to allegedly copyright infringing content in response to takedown notices. Instead, it forwards these takedowns to the hosting company associated with the customer account.

However, these takedown notices do serve a purpose. They are a prerequisite for obtaining a DMCA subpoena, which Sony Music Japan requested at a California federal court this week.

Sony requested two DMCA subpoenas, both targeted at hikarinoakari.com and hnadownloads.co. The latter domain receives the bulk of its traffic from the first, which isn’t a surprise considering the ‘hnadownloads’ name.

Through the subpoena, the music company hopes to obtain additional information on the people behind these sites. That includes, names, IP-addresses, and payment info. Presumably, this will be used for follow-up enforcement actions.

“The sole purpose for which the requested subpoena is sought is to obtain the identities of the alleged infringer(s) described in the DMCA Notice and such information will only be used for the purpose of protecting Owners’ copyright rights,” Sony writes.

It’s unclear whether Cloudflare will be able to hand over any usable information and for the moment, HnA remains online.

Several of the infringing URLs that were identified by Sony have recently been taken down, including this one. However, others remain readily available. The same applies to private forum threads and Discord postings, of course.

—

A copy of the subpoenas requests from Sony Music Entertainment Japan can be found here (pdf) and here (pdf).

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In 2022, it was public knowledge that the MPA had its eye on video hosting and streaming service DoodStream.

When the MPA’s top lawyer called the site out a year later, DoodStream’s operators may have underestimated how significant that was. What followed was a copyright infringement lawsuit, filed at the Delhi High Court in India, DoodStream’s home turf.

DoodStream Ordered to Remove All Content Owned By The Plaintiffs

The details of an injunction obtained by the studios and the subsequent fallout are available in two in-depth articles published last month.

The bottom line is that DoodStream’s efforts to remove all copies of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works failed to meet the requirements of the injunction. The site’s operators complained that they weren’t allowed enough time to remove between 500,000 and 1,000,000 links to pirated videos. Needless to say, the Court was unsympathetic.

In light of DoodStream’s rejection of various proposals to limit ongoing infringement, a poor outcome for the defendants seemed increasingly likely. Removing download links, for example, was dismissed as a complete non-starter since that “would end up in the website being completely bare and inept.”

Infringing Content Removal Devastates DoodStream’s Traffic

The Court’s response was to issue an order that banned DoodStream’s owners, Raja Durai and Sarvesh Chandran, from directly or indirectly operating their own website, pending a hearing listed for September 18, 2024.

In the meantime, measures to prevent the plaintiffs’ content being made available via the DoodStream platform appear to be having a catastrophic effect on the service’s traffic.

The MPA previously estimated that DoodStream was good for 82.7 million visits during August 2022 alone. Semrush data indicates that during March 2024, doodstream.com received a very healthy 95.91 million visits. A month into the lawsuit, visits had plummeted to 35.95 million. In May, the number of visits was less than 27 million, almost 25% down on the previous month.

In common with similar sites operating in the same sector, DoodStream has many domains. The order that restrains the site’s owners from operating the site lists around 20. We can’t say with any certainty how many more exist beyond that, but it’s more than a handful. The traffic for these domains shouldn’t be added together due to the way they’re used, but the decline overall is significant.

Traffic Takes a Hammering

One of the domains the Court did list in its order is ds2play.com. According to Semrush data for March, the domain received 102.97 million visits. A month later, visits were down to less than 35 million and in May, a further 43% decrease in visits left the domain with barely a fifth of the visits it had before the lawsuit.

Domains with considerably less traffic include dood.watch; visits in March were roughly 2.73 million, but in May, that had reduced to 977K. Similar levels can be seen for doodstream.co, which in May received 968K, a decrease of 34% on the previous month. Likewise, dood.sh, down 45% on April’s figures in May along with a 22,000 place decline in global site ranking.

There is a domain with more interesting features, however.

Millions of Visits, But to Watch What?

Perhaps the most intriguing domain overall is dood.re. In March, it received almost 143 million visits, but in May, that had collapsed to less than 25 million, a 35% decline compared to the previous month.

What we see with this domain are some apparent gains being made amid the chaos of the headline losses. With links to mainstream movies being removed in their hundreds of thousands, there is at least some content that Hollywood can’t touch; or at least, refuses to touch – pornography.

In May, traffic to dood.re from X actually increased by almost 15%, but the big riser was way out ahead. With a 43% boost over the previous month, adult site PornHoarder became one of the domain’s leading sources of traffic.

On one hand, this might be considered a small positive in a sea of otherwise bad news and collapsing traffic. However, the Delhi High Court recently noted that by storing and distributing material that is illegal in India, any hope of seeking refuge under Section 79 of the IT Act, as an intermediary exempt from liability, is futile.

Perhaps the big question is who, if anyone, is running the site. Some uploaders to the site claim they are being paid as normal. Some uploaders claim they are not being paid at all.

Whatever the truth, the uncertainty appears to be harming confidence, as the wait for September’s hearing continues. It may not kill the site, especially when others seem prepared to pick up the slack, but the studios will settle for the disruption, at least for now.

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When news began to break in early March, indicating that Spain’s most powerful football league had been authorized by a local court to track down people who simply viewed pirate streams, the story made for puzzling reading.

Claims in the media, that this related to pirate IPTV subscribers, spread like wildfire. That benefited LaLiga’s deterrent messaging campaign but lacked any basis in truth. That prompted a corrective statement by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia.

Not only did the Court state that mere viewers would not be targeted when LaLiga obtained alleged pirates’ identities from local ISPs, its statement clarified that this wasn’t about IPTV at all; it concerned card-sharing, an entirely different type of piracy.

“[T]he basis for agreeing to the requested preliminary diligence, can only be carried out against the ‘cardsharers’ who re-spread the signal and profit from it, and not against mere end users,” the statement explained.

And that was that, at least until letters from LaLiga’s lawyers started being delivered to homes in Spain last month.

Old School “Pay Up Or Else” Approach

The existence of the letters was first reported by lawyer David Maeztu who posted a section of one on X together with some explanatory notes.

“A conciliation claim [offer to settle] is filed against a user, who has been identified by his IP [address] because ‘it has been possible to confirm that from his Internet account [.] connections have been made to the pirate platform [.] from which access was provided’,” Maeztu explains.

“That is to say, it is a mere user connecting to a service. So yes, they intend to go against end users at least in a prior conciliation claim, which is not the same as a claim as such.”

In the letter above, LaLiga’s lawyer alleges that “at least on Day 32 of LALIGA EA SPORTS and Day 36 of LALIGA HYPERMOTION that took place between the 19th and April 22, 2024,” through the letter recipient’s internet connection, “illicit access to the audiovisual contents of LaLiga was obtained, without the consent of my client.”

The letter continues by stating that if the alleged infringer “immediately ceases the indicated behavior and, in any case, undertakes to restrict access through its network to those IP addresses, domains and web pages that allow illegal access to the referred contents,” and also “agrees to pay LaLiga 450.16 euros as compensation for the damages caused by his conduct,” the matter can be resolved.

In some respects, this sounds not dissimilar to an old school pay-up-or-else scheme, but as we suspected when reporting on this back in March, this goes way beyond anything seen before in a piracy case.

Spanish ISPs Appear to Be The Vital Component

Copyright infringement claims refer to allegedly infringing acts that have already happened; as such, claims for damages or compensation for infringements that haven’t happened yet face obvious challenges. It’s possible, based on a pattern of historical behavior, to obtain an injunction to restrain future infringement, but that’s usually as far as the law goes in these types of cases.

Based on information available at the time, our theory was that LaLiga had zero information that would allow it to identify any of the supposed infringers at Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, MásMóvil and Digi, the ISPs listed in the court order. Without an IP address, LaLiga wouldn’t be able to identify an alleged infringers’ ISP, let alone the actual infringer.

When rightsholders observe an infringement taking place online, they typically link it to an IP address. They then ask the relevant ISP to provide the identity of the subscriber who was using that IP address at the time of the observed infringement. In March, everything pointed to LaLiga having zero evidence against any users of the ISPs in question; we assumed that the ISPs would be asked to trawl their databases looking for evidence, which in itself would’ve been extraordinary.

However, if we take a look at the letter published by David Maeztu, we see that the act(s) for which LaLiga is demanding 450 euros, supposedly took place in April – two months after the court order was obtained. That not only adds credibility to the theory that LaLiga had no evidence of infringement when it obtained the court order, it also suggests that the alleged offenses referenced in the settlement letters hadn’t even happened yet.

“This makes no sense, and it would be good if the operators [ISPs] explained how this is possible,” Maeztu notes.

ISPs’ Loyalties Seem to Lie With LaLiga

As Maeztu points out, this situation makes absolutely no sense, but when the major ISPs in Spain profit from broadcasting football, it seems at least possible that extraordinary requests may be received more sympathetically.

Based on information currently available, it seems reasonable to assume that LaLiga has supplied the ISPs with card-sharing server IP addresses, plus additional information such as ports, and the ISPs are now logging (or retrieving from their logs) the IP addresses that access those servers.

After matching those IP addresses to subscriber accounts, the personal details of those subscribers are handed over to LaLiga by their ISPs, quite possibly becoming the only evidence supporting the claims in the cash settlement letters themselves.

LaLiga president Javier Tebas Medrano previously stated that IP addresses collected by LaLiga “that transmit illegal content” would be sent to Spanish ISPs. The court order states that the IP address assigned to the user when they accessed the server “that enabled the audiovisual content to be shared unlawfully” would be handed over to LaLiga.

That appears to underline the importance of the ISPs in this process, while also running counter to the assurances of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia that users would not be targeted.

Implications Beyond a Few Card-Sharers?

After appearing to cross the threshold of ISPs providing evidence of infringement from inside their own networks, could this have implications beyond identifying people who obtain football matches for free?

For example, would the prospect of identifying the anonymous operator of a whistleblowing website, accused of posting content that undermines an individual’s fundamental right to honor under Spanish law, find new opportunity beyond the compliance of the website’s host?

Of course, in this hypothetical scenario, the fundamental right to honor would have to battle against the right to freedom of expression. However, should the alleged victim have deep enough pockets, it might be of some comfort to know that proactive monitoring to obtain evidence, from inside an ISP’s network, might not be the unthinkable prospect it once was.

But as Maeztu notes, it would be good if the operators took the opportunity to explain how all of this works. It would be interesting to hear how this arrangement doesn’t leave all internet users in Spain worse off than before, and why it was worth it for the sake of a few 450 euro ‘fines’.

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With more than half a billion site visits in just three months, pirate streaming site FMovies is seen as a major threat by Hollywood.

The pirate site rivals legal streaming platforms such as Disney+ in web traffic and has become the poster child for rejuvenated site blocking proposals in the U.S. Congress.

Pressure Mounts

To illustrate the brazenness of the site, lawmakers in Congress got a demo of the site from MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President, Karyn Temple, late last year. This showed how easy it is to stream the latest movies and TV shows in one of the best secured buildings in the country.

The operators of FMovies, who allegedly reside in Vietnam, are not oblivious to the controversy. They know that the MPA and ACE are on their heels but have managed to continue their operations despite legal and diplomatic pressure.

From the outside, little appeared to change. The site has switched to a new domain name occasionally, possibly to fight back against search engine demotions and pirate site blockades, but the constant stream of fresh pirated content kept going; at least until last week.

FMovies Goes Stale

Without any type of explanation, FMovies hasn’t updated with new content for over a week.

For example, the latest “House of the Dragon” release on the site is episode one, which came out on June 17th. The Boys, meanwhile, is ‘stuck’ at the fourth episode, which dates back to June 20th.

The most recent episodes appear to have been added to the pirate streaming site little over a week ago. That also applies to movies, as recent releases such as Netflix’s “A Family Affair” are not listed.

This release delay is very unusual. Typically, pirated TV episodes and movies appear on FMovies within hours of their official release. The site’s users need this type of instant access, or else they switch to one of the many alternatives or clones.

Needless to say, the site’s users are not happy. Aside from the lack of new releases, the site functions normally and, over in the comment sections, people are starting to wonder what’s going on.

Something’s Up

To find out more, TorrentFreak attempted to contact the site’s operators, but it appears that the regular contact channel is down at the time of writing.

The lack of new content might simply be the result of a ‘simple’ technical problem. However, the fact that it has persisted for more than a week is highly unusual, especially without any official updates from the team.

For context, it’s worth noting that the FMovies team was previously linked to other pirate sites including BflixHD, SflixTV, and Losmoviesz. These sites don’t have any trouble on the supply side, it seems.

Given that all major anti-piracy groups have FMovies in their sights, we can’t rule out an enforcement effort or intervention. If that’s the case, it was only partially successful, so far, as the ‘stale’ site itself remains operational for the moment.

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The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is the most downloaded title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on July 01 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

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Next month will mark the 13th anniversary of the first site blocking injunction in the UK.

Action by the major Hollywood studios against Usenet indexing site Newzbin led to ISP BT being ordered to block the service.

That was just the beginning and in most cases today, major UK ISPs including BT, Virgin Media, and Sky, are supportive of site blocking requests and happily carry them out, despite increasing complexity.

UK Site Blocking

In broad terms, blocking injunctions allow rightsholders to block domains, subdomains, and IP addresses, depending on the services targeted and the type of injunction obtained. Largely static piracy websites are tackled by blocking domains and subdomains, which are often deployed en masse by pirate sites to circumvent blocking.

In many cases, the details of specialist ‘live’ blocking injunctions targeting IPTV providers are treated as confidential by the High Court. These blocks are usually temporary in nature and designed to prevent piracy of specific sporting events, typically football matches in the UK’s Premier League.

There is no reliable way of tracking this type of blocking and we make no attempt to cover it here. The one major exception is blocking carried out on behalf of broadcaster Sky following an injunction the company obtained in 2023.

Pirate Site/Service Blocking: First Half of 2024

Specific details remain unavailable to the public but the volume of fully-qualified domain names (FQDN) blocked as a result of the Sky order renders the broadcaster the most prolific requester of blocks (on a URL basis) for the whole of the UK for the first half of 2024.

Sky’s dramatic lead and the unusual nature of the order led to the pirate services targeted deploying thousands of subdomains in an effort to mitigate blocking. In no small part this has led to the massive blocking seen in the first half of this year.

A not-dissimilar situation has also led to the BPI targeting hundreds of domains/subdomains featuring the term ‘mp3juice’ or variations thereof. The music industry group has also been kept busy trying to block various unblocking portals that regularly spring up to circumvent blocking of more traditional sites including The Pirate Bay, TorrentDownloads, 1337x, and LimeTorrents.

For the MPA, a tsunami of 123movies, movies123, soap2day, putlocker, solarmovie, lookmovie, and bflix variants maintained their reputation as irritants in the first half of the year.

At the same time, these and similar brand names presented pirate site visitors with an impenetrable sea of clones and look-a-likes that may (or may not) infect their machines with malware. This is mostly due to the virtually impossible task of sifting through a quagmire of copycat domains to determine which (if any) relate to sites previously considered safe or safer to use, before they were blocked.

It’s likely that the second half of 2024 will serve up more of the same. Whether piracy rates will fall as blocking increases is a completely different question, unlike the risk of malware infection which seems primed for movement in an upwards direction.

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Nintendo is doing everything in its power to stop the public from playing pirated games on the Switch console.

The Japanese gaming company won several lawsuits in recent history, shutting down websites that distributed pirated ROMs.

Most notable, perhaps, was the criminal referral that resulted in the demise of the infamous hacking group Team-Xecuter. The group released several ‘jailbreak’ hacks for gaming consoles in the past and was widely regarded as Nintendo’s main nemesis.

With the win against Team-Xecuter, Nintendo hoped that the modding scene would fade into oblivion, but that’s not what happened. In recent years, new tools and hardware solutions were released, requiring Nintendo to gas the enforcement pedal once again.

For example, recently Nintendo went after various Switch piracy related sites and services, including the Yuzu emulator, Lockpick, and MIG Switch.

Nintendo vs. Modded Hardware

Nintendo also targeted Modded Hardware behind the scenes. The gaming giant reached out to its alleged owner and operator, Michigan-resident Ryan Daly, who also operates under the alias “Homebrew Homie”.

In March, Nintendo threatened to sue him, after which both parties agreed that the allegedly unlawful activity, which includes selling MIG devices and modded consoles, would stop.

Despite this agreement, Modded Hardware didn’t close shop; that led to further outreach by Nintendo earlier this month after which it still remained online. Daly said that he was looking for a new lawyer, but Nintendo’s patience had run out and it followed up with a lawsuit.

In a complaint filed at a federal court in Seattle, Washington, Nintendo accuses Modded Hardware of copyright infringement and violating the DMCA by trafficking in circumvention devices, among other things.

These unauthorized activities cause Nintendo substantial and irreparable harm, it argues, and the company wants them to stop immediately. In addition, Nintendo hopes to recoup damages, which can potentially run into millions of dollars.

Mod Chips, MIG Switch, and Pirated Games

The complaint mentions that Modded Hardware sells several pieces of hardware that circumvent its piracy protections. These include Mod Chips and the “MIG Switch,” a memory card that allows people to play pirated copies of Nintendo Switch games on authentic consoles.

In addition to selling hardware hacks, the defendant also offered mail-in modding services and modded versions of Switch consoles, for the less technically inclined. These were reportedly loaded with pirated games, according to the complaint.

“Defendant not only offers the hardware and firmware to create and play pirated games, but he also provides his customers with copies of pirated Nintendo games,” the complaint reads.

“Typically, when a customer purchases a Hacked Console or the Circumvention Services, Defendant preinstalls on the console a portfolio of ready-to-play pirated games, including some of Nintendo’s most popular titles such as its Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid games.”

Loaded Consoles

The selling of alleged circumvention devices is a problem, Nintendo writes, as that’s the only way for people to play pirated games. As such, Nintendo’s piracy problem persists.

“Indeed, because pirated Nintendo Switch games cannot be used or created without a Hacked Console and related software and hardware, it is only because of products and services such as those sold by Defendant that illegal marketplaces distributing pirated games exist and thrive,” Nintendo writes.

Overall, Nintendo alleges that Modded Hardware and its alleged operator trafficked in circumvention devices by selling mod-chips and MIG devices. That violates the DMCA, for which Nintendo demands damages.

In addition, the gaming company seeks damages for direct and contributory copyright infringement, accusing the defendant of adding pirated games to consoles. These hardware devices and consoles should all be destroyed, which may or may not include consoles that customers have sent in.

Archbox & r/SwitchPirates

In addition to the Modded Hardware lawsuit, Nintendo also filed a complaint at the Washington federal court against Arizona-resident James Williams, known online as ‘Archbox’. According to Nintendo, Archbox is connected to several ‘pirate shops’ through which copies of unauthorized games are distributed.

“Defendant is the operator, overseer, and driving force behind several Pirate Shops, through which Defendant has offered massive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games,” the complaint reads.

In addition to running these pirate shops, the defendant allegedly helped people to obtain and use circumvention software, so they could play pirated games. This activity was allegedly boosted through the SwitchPirates subreddit, where Archbox was a moderator.

“Defendant became a leading (if not the primary) moderator of the SwitchPirates Reddit community, which he helped grow to nearly 190,000 members. Since 2019, Defendant has posted thousands of comments and messages to the SwitchPirates Reddit Group,” the complaint reads.

“Defendant’s posts have included, by way of example, messages directing users to the Pirate Shops […]; and offering technical advice and encouragement to other users about how to use the Pirate Shops, how to download and install Circumvention Software, and how to play pirated copies of Nintendo Switch games.”

The pirate shops that Archbox is believed to be involved in include Jack-in-the-Shop, Turtle in the Shop and NekoDrive, which all shut down following a cease and desist letter Nintendo sent in March.

A fourth shop, LiberaShop, is still operational, presumably on Telegram, allegedly promoting and offering thousands of pirated Nintendo games to the public.

Self-proclaimed Pirate

The allegations put forward in the complaint shouldn’t come as a surprise to Archbox, Nintendo suggests. He is reportedly a self-proclaimed “pirate” who is not willing to pay for legitimate games, and also helps others to join the pirate ranks.

“Defendant is well aware that his conduct is unlawful and infringes Nintendo’s intellectual property rights. Indeed, Defendant has bragged publicly that he is a ‘pirate’ who ‘[isn’t] going to give Nintendo $50 for a game’,” Nintendo writes.

$50 for a game?

The complaint includes a wide variety of additional examples. Ultimately, it accuses Archbox of direct and contributory copyright infringement, various DMCA violations including trafficking in circumvention devices, as well as breach of contract.

Similar to the Modded Hardware complaint, the alleged damages are not specified, but can theoretically run into the millions of dollars.

—

A copy of the Modded Hardware complaint is available here (pdf) and the complaint against Archbox can be found here (pdf). We will keep a close eye on both cases and will likely discuss these, as well as the responses, in more detail later

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Founded in 2012, MagnetDL has amassed a substantial user base by offering a clear and easy-to-use torrent search portal.

As its name suggests, the site relies on magnet links instead of regular torrent files, and the site is particularly popular in the United States.

Over the past few days, however, regular users have trouble reaching the site. Instead of the usual search box, they now see a Cloudflare error message, suggesting that MagnetDL’s server is unreachable.

No Response

Cloudflare error 523

To find out more about the prolonged downtime, TorrentFreak reached out to the site’s operator. But, several days have passed now and we have yet to hear back. It’s possible that the site merely has hosting-related issues. However, nothing can be ruled out at this point.

The last time MagnetDL went down for several days dates back more than five years. At the time, the site decided to throw the towel, without prior warning.

Copyright-Related Hosting Problems

At the time, the operator ran into copyright troubles with its hosting provider, and pulling the plug initially made sense. However, after seeing many disappointed comments from users, the site returned after little more than a week.

It’s certainly possible that the current downtime is again caused by copyright complaints. However, without confirmation, we can only speculate.

In recent years, MagnetDL mostly stayed under the radar. The site briefly surprised some people when it appeared to give unsolicited vaccination advice during the height of the Covid epidemic, but that eventually passed.

The site is currently blocked following court orders in a few countries, including the UK and Australia. Nonetheless, MagnetDL managed to get more than 10 million monthly visits, making it one of the more popular torrent search engines.

If more information comes in on MagnetDL’s downtime, we will update this article accordingly.

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In 2023, broadcaster Canal+ went to court in France with the goal of obtaining an order requiring local ISPs to block over 100 pirate sports streaming sites.

The French court complied with the request; ISPs including Orange, SFR, OutreMer Télécom, Free, and Bouygues Télécom, were ordered to implement technical measures to prevent access to Footybite.co, Streamcheck.link, SportBay.sx, TVFutbol.info, and Catchystream.com, among dozens of others.

Since the ISPs have their own DNS resolvers for use by their own customers, these were configured to provide non-authentic responses to deny access to the sites in question. Somewhat inevitably, some of the ISPs’ users reconfigured their machines to use third-party DNS servers, included those provided by Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco.

Canal+ Targets DNS Providers

To prevent these workarounds, last year Canal+ took legal action against three popular public DNS providers – Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Google (8.8.8.8), and Cisco (208.69.38.205) – demanding blocking measures similar to those already implemented by French ISPs under Article L333-10 of the French Sports Code.

The Paris judicial court responded this May by handing down two orders; one concerning Premier League matches and the other relating to matches played in the Champions League. The Court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to implement measures to prevent French internet users from using their services to access around 117 pirate domains.

Google previously indicated it would comply and during the last 24 hours, OpenDNS complied too, although perhaps not in the manner Canal+ or the Court had anticipated.

OpenDNS Suspends Entire Service to the Whole of France

Reports of problems with the OpenDNS service seemed to begin on Friday, and it didn’t take long to discover the cause. The technical issues were isolated to France and apparently parts of Portugal too, with an explanation having appeared on the OpenDNS website, perhaps as early as Thursday evening.

“Effective June 28, 2024: Due to a court order in France issued under Article L.333-10 of the French Sport code and a court order in Portugal issued under Article 210-G(3) of the Portuguese Copyright Code, the OpenDNS service is not currently available to users in France and certain French territories and in Portugal. We apologize for the inconvenience,” the announcement reads.

OpenDNS doesn’t appear to have elaborated on its decision at the time of writing, but it’s certainly possible that the operators of this technical information service strongly oppose being ordered to undermine its accuracy.

The demands of Canal+, with full support of courts in both France and Portugal, effectively require OpenDNS to lie in response to DNS inquiries. It’s not difficult to see why that would be a problem for the operators of entirely neutral internet infrastructure, not least because this order is almost guaranteed not to be the last of its kind.

It’s a bold move that some will undoubtedly criticize. For others, the OpenDNS decision represents the type of dramatic pushback required to draw attention to anti-piracy measures that are increasingly encroaching on the vital mechanisms underpinning the internet itself.

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Defying even the broadest definition of ‘justice’ or even basic common sense, more than 12 years after his initial arrest, Kim Dotcom is still fighting the New Zealand government on every detail of his case.

Given that the booby prize for not doing so is an all-expenses-paid trip to the United States, few could blame him. But why this has been allowed to drag on for so long can only be answered by New Zealand’s government.

Whether Dotcom is eventually found innocent or guilty, justice needs to be seen to be done. There’s no denying Dotcom’s significant contribution to undermining the case against him but, as the defendant, it’s his job to find errors and blunders to exploit. And there has been no shortage of those and from the outside, the optics are not great.

Seized Hard Drives

During the 2012 operation to shut down Megaupload, around 135 devices were seized by law enforcement in New Zealand. Yet it was a full decade before the High Court ruled that devices belonging to Dotcom, seized at his home a decade earlier, could be sent to the United States. The reasons for that delay are complicated but of course, nothing is ever straightforward or fully settled in this case.

The decision by the High Court in 2022 was inevitably appealed by Dotcom but according to RNZ, not until September 2023.

This week, the Court of Appeal reportedly dismissed the proceedings, suggesting that Dotcom has failed in his latest bid to prevent the government from handing the hard drives – and their passwords – over to the FBI in the United States. Given the history of the last 12 years, no one should be surprised if something else gets in the way of that actually happening anytime soon.

In 2020, a panel of judges at New Zealand’s Supreme Court ruled that Kim Dotcom can be extradited to the United States to face copyright infringement charges. The panel also said that due to Dotcom being wrongfully denied a judicial review in 2015, Dotcom could challenge the Supreme Court’s decision; via a judicial review, no less.

Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk

In May 2022, former Megaupload executives Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk revealed that they had signed a deal to avoid extradition to the United States. One month later, the men pleaded guilty to a series of crimes on the understanding that any sentence would be served in New Zealand.

Just over a year ago, the pair were sentenced to serve 2.5 years behind bars, initially at the Mt Eden Corrections Facility (MECF) in the central Auckland suburb of Mt Eden.

Last month, just 11 months after the sentencing of his former colleagues, Kim Dotcom claimed they were already free after spending “10 months in what US prisoners would consider a New Zealand Wellness Retreat.”

“They were originally charged with 186 years by the US DOJ for the so called ‘Mega conspiracy’ and got off with a 99.5% discount in exchange for false confessions,” Dotcom continued. “Obviously they just wanted to move on with their lives after 10 years on bail.”

Moving on after a decade of limbo was something Ortmann and van der Kolk had already been planning for. Since 2014 the pair had dedicated their business lives to the development of Mega, now one of the leading file-hosting companies on the internet. Due to their convictions, however, the pair have been banned from managing any companies in New Zealand for five years.

According to NZHerald, New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has confirmed that the ban will run until June 15, 2028.

“This prohibition protects the New Zealand public by ensuring that individuals with dishonesty convictions cannot be company directors,” Vanessa Cook, acting head of MBIE’s criminal proceeds integrity and enforcement team, told the publication.

“As the former executives were part of global criminal enterprise that cost copyright holders billions of dollars, it was imperative for us to ensure they are prohibited from managing or being director of any company.”

What Now For Kim Dotcom?

After claiming to be “broke and destitute” in 2015, Dotcom now lives in a dream home in a dream location in New Zealand while New Zealand’s government continues to spend public money, at last count around $20 million, attempting to counter whatever Dotcom comes up with next.

Last year, then Minister of Justice Kiri Allan said that while a warrant to extradite Dotcom required her signature, it’s likely that Dotcom would seek a judicial review to buy more time in New Zealand.

“I have received detailed submissions from Mr Dotcom. In due course I will receive further advice on those matters before making any decision,” Allen told New Zealand Herald at the time.

“Unfortunately, I cannot say how long that will take.”

After just 12 years, it’s quite remarkable that this year-old comment remains relevant even today.

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In the summer of 2017, several of the world’s largest entertainment industry companies teamed up to create a brand new anti-piracy coalition.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) aimed to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and leverage the group’s combined anti-piracy resources to tackle the global online piracy problem.

With dozens of members around the world, including Disney, Netflix, the BBC, beIN, Sony, and others, it lived up to expectations. While piracy has yet to be eradicated, the MPA-led group has claimed several major achievements around the globe.

This success is partly the result of planned resource sharing. As the coalition grew, collaborations expanded from the private to the public sector, forging bonds with governments and law enforcement agencies.

Much of this progress was made under former ACE head Jan Van Voorn, who recently left ACE for a new opportunity. With van Voorn’s departure, valuable experience walked out of the door, but his replacement is certainly capable of filling those shoes.

ACE has a new Boss

Earlier this week, the MPA revealed Larissa Knapp as its new Global Chief of Content Protection and the new head of the ACE coalition. Knapp is a law enforcement veteran who before taking on this new opportunity served as the fourth highest-ranking FBI official.

Knapp is therefore ideally positioned to expand ACE’s international contacts, particularly when it comes to collaborating with law enforcement offices around the globe.

“Her leadership will focus on deepening and broadening ACE’s partnerships with law enforcement agencies around the world, expanding its membership base, and growing ACE’s operational footprint in key markets to support the protection of creators and consumers,” MPA said, commenting on the appointment.

Knapp certainly brings plenty of experience to the table. At the FBI, she handled large-scale criminal investigations, leading teams of thousands of investigators. This included many intellectual property and cybersecurity cases.

FBI Lessons

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Knapp recalls that she handled one of the first federally prosecuted trade secret theft cases in her early career at the FBI. The investigation revolved around a contract employee who stole a billion-dollar proposal from a competitor.

The defendant was caught and sentenced after a private citizen reported them to the authorities. However, because this person sold the trade secrets for a small price, the punishment was rather low.

While this wasn’t a piracy case, the matter underscored the value of proper content protection. This is even more important in the present day and age, where most information is digital, and easier to transfer than ever before.

“For me, the case underscored the fragility of intellectual property and how companies must guard against theft – this multi-billion-dollar document was left in a conference room and taken by an individual who did not have the access or clearance to see such sensitive information,” Knapp tells us.

“It demonstrated the critical nature of partnerships and trust, specifically the willingness of the good corporate citizen to come forward and the victim company understanding what law enforcement would and would not do,” she adds. 

Private & Public Sector Cooperation

Rightsholders, including many ACE members, would ideally like to see the authorities, including the FBI, launch more piracy investigations. This isn’t always possible, as resources are limited, which is one of the reasons why ACE exists today.

The coalition often collaborates with official law enforcement authorities and will continue to do so in future. In addition to going after pirate sites and services directly, it can also assist criminal prosecutions. These partnerships are valuable and key to booking progress, Knapp believes.

“I look forward to working with the IPR Center and the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) in my new capacity to align strategies in the fight against piracy. Content piracy is a global crime, and we need a worldwide coalition with complementary areas of expertise to fight it,” Knapp says.

“Thanks to ACE’s worldwide footprint, we work closely with major enforcement agencies such as Interpol, Europol, the FBI and others. The synergies created by working closely with these partners are what make ACE effective in stopping piracy rings and bringing criminal operators to justice. It’s truly a collaborative effort.”

At the FBI, Knapp collaborated with the MPA and RIAA, and now she will approach the piracy challenge from another direction. The contacts and experience she has, will help to book future successes.

For example, Knapp mentions that she worked closely together with banking cooperations in the recent past. This experience will benefit future anti-piracy efforts, where it’s often key to trace the money flows of piracy operations.

No Borders

ACE’s new head is impressed with the progress the coalition has made in just seven years, and she plans to utilize her FBI expertise to take anti-piracy enforcement efforts to the next level.

This will involve global cooperation, since pirate sites don’t stop at borders. That’s a tough challenge, but Knapp is convinced that her experience will help to bring more pirates to justice.

“ACE works across multiple jurisdictions, each with their own set of laws, which adds a layer of complexity. There are multiple parallels between these scenarios and many of the cases my teams worked on at the FBI, and from experience I know which strategic approaches are most effective.

“I plan on applying similar strategies to address key issues such as live sports piracy with the goal of seeing more piracy operators face justice.

“Just last week, five operators were convicted in the Jetflicks case, and I’m confident we’ll see more victories like this going forward,” Knapp concludes.

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Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years.

2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of May): Nearly 2,400 news posts